After "Tier 3," the second half of insurance funds entering healthcare: If not competing for beds, what are they competing for?

Recently, TaiKang Xianlin Gulou Hospital was rated as a “Top-Tier” hospital, which is both an affirmation of the hospital’s medical strength and a result of insurance capital’s exploration in the integration of medical care and elderly services.

In recent years, accelerated population aging, the ongoing promotion of the Healthy China strategy, alongside industry transformation, have made the medical industry a “core track” for insurance institutions’布局. Data shows that by the end of 2025, insurance funds will have invested over 400 billion yuan in the medical and health care industry through direct or indirect means, with various hospitals, rehabilitation institutions, and comprehensive medical bodies becoming the focus of布局.

From Ping An’s integration of Peking University Health Resources, TaiKang’s creation of the “Community + Hospital” model, to Qianhai Life’s establishment of a tertiary comprehensive hospital, insurance companies are accelerating their transformation from mere capital investors to builders of the medical health ecosystem, with the “Insurance + Medical” model moving from concept to reality.

Insurance Capital布局迎来“黄金窗口期”

The continuous warming of insurance companies’ investments in hospitals is driven by a three-way resonance of policy, market, and industry.

On the policy level, regulators are continuously “loosening” restrictions on insurance capital. In 2020, multiple departments jointly issued documents supporting insurance funds to invest in the health service industry in accordance with regulations, allowing commercial insurance institutions to orderly invest in the establishment of traditional Chinese and Western medical institutions and health service institutions that integrate rehabilitation, care, and medical care.

In 2025, the “Implementation Plan for High-Quality Development of Pension Finance in the Banking and Insurance Industries” clearly supports insurance companies with strong capital strength and standardized operations to steadily and orderly invest in pension institutions, rehabilitation hospitals, specialized hospitals, etc., providing clear policy guidance for insurance capital布局.

In the same year, the National Financial Regulatory Administration further optimized the industry scope of major equity investments by insurance capital, clarifying the correlation between the medical industry and insurance business, guiding insurance capital to increase investment in fields such as healthcare.

On the market level, the exacerbation of population aging has created a huge demand for medical services, opening up broad development space for the hospital industry. Data shows that currently, the population over 60 years old in China has exceeded 300 million, with over 40 million elderly people being disabled or semi-disabled. The elderly population’s demand for medical rehabilitation, chronic disease management, and high-end diagnosis and treatment services is becoming more urgent.

At the same time, residents’ health awareness continues to improve, and the commercial health insurance market is expanding. Consumers’ integrated demand for “Insurance + Medical Services” is becoming increasingly strong—no longer satisfied with simple post-event claims, but placing more emphasis on full-process services encompassing pre-event prevention, in-process diagnosis and treatment, and post-event rehabilitation, providing a solid market foundation for insurance companies to integrate medical resources and布局 hospitals.

On the industry level, the transformation challenges facing the insurance industry are forcing insurance capital to seek new growth engines. In recent years, traditional insurance businesses have faced multiple pressures such as product homogenization, fierce competition, and declining yields. The difficulties of “increasing personnel and slowing premium growth” in the life insurance industry are becoming increasingly prominent, necessitating the search for new business breakthroughs and profit growth points.

The medical industry, characterized by counter-cyclical performance, stable cash flow, and considerable long-term returns, is highly compatible with the long-term duration characteristics of insurance capital’s liabilities. Additionally, by investing in hospitals, insurance companies can close the “Insurance + Medical” industry chain loop, addressing pain points such as the difficulty of controlling health insurance claims and low customer stickiness, and promoting the industry’s transition from “risk compensation” to “health management.”

“For insurance companies, the strategic value of布局 hospitals and medical services lies in breaking through traditional business bottlenecks: first, mitigating interest rate risk by obtaining stable returns through real assets during periods of declining interest rates; second, building competitive barriers by forming differentiated product services through the medical and elderly care ecosystem, escaping homogenized price wars; third, activating existing customers and converting low-frequency insurance consumption into high-frequency health service interactions, enhancing customer stickiness and lifetime value,” said Bai Wenxi, Vice Chairman of the China Enterprise Capital Alliance, in an interview with the Daily Economic News.

Leading Head Companies and Diverse Models

Currently, leading insurance companies such as Ping An, TaiKang Insurance, China Taiping, and Xinhua Insurance are taking the lead in布局 and forming distinctive development models, leveraging advantages in capital, customers, and licenses. By the end of 2025, leading insurance companies have布局 multiple comprehensive hospitals, rehabilitation hospitals, and medical complexes across the country, forming a full-chain service system covering “prevention - diagnosis - rehabilitation - elderly care.”

In terms of models, the ways insurance companies invest in hospitals vary: some choose to acquire shares through mergers and acquisitions, while others opt for building hospitals themselves.

For instance, since taking over Peking University Health Group in 2021, Ping An has launched a comprehensive integration of resources, operational reforms, discipline construction, and talent planning. In terms of model, it has abandoned the heavy asset expansion path, choosing a strategy of “light assets, heavy services, and integration of top medical resources,” relying on Ping An Group’s “comprehensive finance + medical elderly care” ecological synergy advantages to construct a full-cycle service model of “health management - comprehensive diagnosis and treatment - rehabilitation therapy.” Data shows that by 2025, Peking University Health Group’s non-medical insurance revenue growth rate will reach 35%, outpatient and emergency visits will exceed 3.2 million, and the volume of tertiary and fourth-level surgeries will increase by 20% year-on-year.

The heavy asset self-operated model is represented mainly by TaiKang Insurance, Sunshine Insurance, and Qianhai Life. As a pioneer in the insurance company’s elderly care布局, TaiKang, through TaiKang Health Investment as a platform, has pioneered the “Insurance + Elderly Care” model, adhering to the standardized布局 of “one community, one hospital,” and on this basis, gradually布局 physical medical services through self-construction, investment, and cooperation. Currently, TaiKang Medical has布局 five major medical centers across the country, including TaiKang Xianlin Gulou Hospital, TaiKang Tongji (Wuhan) Hospital, Sichuan TaiKang Hospital, Ningbo TaiKang Brain Hospital, and Shenzhen Qianhai TaiKang Hospital.

Of course, these two approaches are not completely distinct; insurance companies will also complement some light asset medical service resources while布局 heavy assets in hospitals, forming an online and offline collaborative service network. Some insurance companies that adopt a light asset model for布局 hospital service resources may also invest in one or two physical hospitals.

Yuan Shuai, Deputy Director of the Investment Department of the China Urban Development Research Institute, told the Daily Economic News that the heavy asset model is more suitable for first-tier cities or core strategic areas. By acquiring land to build hospitals and forming teams, insurance companies can achieve absolute control over medical quality, brand standards, and service details. Its core advantage lies in being able to create benchmarks like TaiKang Xianlin Gulou Hospital with high entry barriers, forming a brand moat that provides determined scarce resources for high-net-worth clients. The light asset model, on the other hand, is adapted to rapidly sinking markets and multi-point布局 demands, integrating existing medical resources through equity participation, management, or alliances. Its core advantage lies in high capital utilization efficiency and rapid expansion, enabling the rapid creation of a widely covered service network and providing nationwide supporting services for insurance products at lower marginal costs, which is a weapon for insurance companies to seize market share and realize standardized service output.

Focusing on Specialized Features and Rehabilitation

“The closed health loop is the Kaiser Medical model. In this model, the physician group only provides medical services for Kaiser hospitals, with almost all funds coming from Kaiser Insurance; the joint health model belongs to a semi-open health loop, allowing more users and medical resources to participate, thus better achieving the integration of medical care and elderly services,” said an industry insider. The medical insurance closed loop has gone through a development stage from closed to open, achieving a balance of medical prices and networks through the integration of internal and external resources. However, with the arrival of the longevity era, the construction of health loops is gradually facing challenges from aging, making it an urgent issue for insurance companies to solve how to help customers live healthily and long.

This issue has also attracted the attention of industry organizations and practitioners. For health challenges brought about by longevity, the solution from insurance companies is to cooperate with medical colleges and increase investment and exploration in fields such as rehabilitation and chronic diseases. Taking China Taiping as an example, it signed a strategic framework agreement with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in 2022 to jointly establish the “Jiao Medical - Taiping Yuanshen Rehabilitation Research Institute,” exploring new models for the development of rehabilitation medicine.

Bai Wenxi stated that under the dual drive of the aging wave and the Healthy China strategy, the cross-border integration of “Insurance + Medical” is entering a mature phase from the exploratory stage. Its ultimate goal is not merely simple asset allocation, but to build a new health ecosystem centered on health, with insurance as the payment hub and medical services as the support. Looking ahead, investments by insurance companies in hospitals will present three core trends:

First, from “land grabbing” to “meticulous cultivation.” Early investments by insurance capital focused on asset scale and bed count; in the future, there will be a greater emphasis on specialty capability building, operational efficiency enhancement, and medical quality certification.

Second, technology empowerment will become the key to differentiation. AI (artificial intelligence) assisted diagnosis and treatment, telemedicine, and intelligent health management will deeply integrate into the medical system of insurance capital, not only enhancing service efficiency but also feeding back health data for insurance product innovation and risk control optimization.

Third, the combination of “heavy asset benchmarks + light asset networks” will become the mainstream paradigm. Using a few flagship hospitals to establish brands and standards, while expanding coverage through a broad cooperative network, can control capital consumption while achieving economies of scale. This model balances service quality and commercial sustainability and is expected to become the industry’s consensus.

“In the future, investments by insurance capital in hospitals will show core trends of ‘refined operation’ and ‘digital symbiosis,’ and will no longer blindly pursue bed count, but will delve into specialized features and rehabilitation effectiveness,” Yuan Shuai also stated. In this process, “heavy assets as benchmarks, light assets for scale expansion” will undoubtedly become the mainstream model in the industry. Insurance companies will use a few heavy asset projects to establish “service skylines” and technical standards, serving as the soul and ballast of the brand; simultaneously, they will link vast light asset institutions through digital platforms, forming a tiered ecosystem of “tall towers leading and wide bases covering.” This model not only addresses the low capital turnover rate pain points of the heavy asset model but also avoids the risks of inconsistent service quality in the light asset model, finding the optimal balance between premium leverage and real operations for insurance companies, and will promote medical health services towards true hierarchical diagnosis and continuous management.